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Looking for some advice on designing a solution for a large conference room.

- Ceiling mounting of APs is NOT an option.

- The room is 150 x 60 feet of open space.

- The entire open space needs a High Density solution to accommodate 500 devices for web/email type traffic only.

- My proposed AP is Cisco 3702e

- My proposed design (attached) is to wall mount 3 APs with each using a 6 dBi patch wall-mount antenna on each of the long sides (6 total APs).

- Probably will not have time to order one AP/antenna and do a survey first.  I have to determine all hardware for a BOM and deploy it fast. 

Questions:

1.  I'm having trouble finding specific info on how many feet off the floor should the antenna be wall-mounted ?  What's the best way to determine the optimal height considering the entire open space needs coverage (except for maybe the couple feet along the wall edges).   

2.  Any suggestions on a better design solution are appreciated?  Thanks

Charlie

Is there any possibility of putting an AP in a housing among the seats? Essentially replace a seat with a wooden structure and put the AP in it, cabling tends to be the issue but it gets the RF to the people. 

Initial thoughts on your design is the issue of how to stop co-channel interference with only 3 2.4Ghz channels and APs on opposite walls pointing at each other to some extent. 

Is it 500 devices or 500 people (each with multiple devices)?

M

PS no attached file

Thx for fast response Michael.

I am 99% sure they will NOT allow floor-based solutions too.  It will have to be wall-mount.

Regarding CCI, this will not be an issue as I will have 3 of the 2.4 GHz radios disabled and the other 3 on channels 1,6,11.

The 5 GHz radios will all be enabled on diff channels, so I planned on essentially having a total of 9 radios enabled with no CCI.  I have done this type of thing before, but never with wall mounting.  I'm even okay if 2.4 GHz does not provide coverage for the entire room and most devices go on 5 GHz since the traffic will only be email/web, etc.   Also, it is a max of 500 devices only and usually will be far less.

My primary concern / question is coverage on 5 GHz.  How high should I be mounting the antennas on the walls?

thx

Have you at least performed a predictive survey ?   This sounds like overkill for the space.

To answer your question, eight to ten feet, or even a little more should work just fine.   You'll be well within the range of anything in the room, from just about any position to any AP.  I would want load balancing AP's.   But forget RRM - test it out using a couple of the lowest powered client devices.

Thanks Howard.  You answered my primary question.

I am in the process of running it through a predictive survey also.  My initial thought though is capacity planning for worst case of 500 devices.  Given that, my first thoughts are 6 APs to realize 9 cells (Six on 5GHz and 3 on 2.4GHz).  Then, I would use static channel and tx-power's, disable low data rates, set the basic rate at 24 or even higher and keep tweaking the tx-power until achieving the smallest cell sizes possible.  Then, each cell would support about 50 clients on average.  Even if the reality is some cells get 30 clients and others get 70 clients, that would probably work well also.

Would you suggest less APs?  How many and why?  Other suggestions are welcome too?

Thanks